When talking about knowledge management (KM) I use the following ‘definition’. Knowledge management is about connecting:People to people;People to information;Information to people;Information to information.In short:(1) is about helping people find other people (knowledge) that can help them solve their problem, answer their question, collaborate with them, etc.(2) is about helping people find relevant information to be able to do their work (pull).(3) is about pushing information to people so they can do their work, are kept up to date about new issues, etc. (push)(4) is about aggregate data and information into new information (semi-)automatically. Then this can be used for 2 and 3.Basically the reason why you would want to manage information is the enhancement of organisational and personal performance.This definition summarizes the important aspects of KM.But I was wondering where I got this definition from… Is it my definition? Or did somebody else come up with it?I looked aroun…

Take a look at Tara Hunt's blog for an interesting list of community archetypes. She states:This is a very very rough draft of the outline for what the Archetypes look like in a community (mostly thrown up here from TextPad notes). It is important to note that all of these community archetypes play highly positive roles in various communities.In my post on the Wikinomics book, I mentioned that I miss wiki-roles (or archetypes) in the book. Could this list be a good starting point? It looks like it. However w.r.t. wiki's I miss a role in Tara's list. I'd call them: ‘pruners’/'cleaners’. These people that go through wiki pages, don't really add content, but make sure the content is readable. They remove typos, correct layout issues, etc. Is there such a or a comparable role in communities?

Will Microsoft Office be replaced by online Office versions? Google, Zoho, etc. seem to be paving the way. However, skeptics could always say: "But I can't work offline with those applications." True, up till now. Google Gears came along and now, based on Google Gears, Zoho released its first version of offline WebOffice. This first version only supports viewing offline documents. Anyway, it's a first step towards answering the question I started this post with, with "yes". TechCrunch's (also) reports on this topic and has a demo video.

Sometimes you run into something on the web that is soooo helpful. I was reading Luis Suarez's blog and he posted about Stephen Collin's presentation on "Knowledge Worker 2.0". Luis says that is simply summarizes everything we know about knowledge management and work - in one single presentation. So, I went through the presentation and, WOW!, I absolutely agree. What a wonderful presentation (w.r.t. content and design)!But Stephen has more to share. Looking for interesting presentations to explain your IT department how you want to work? Look here! Or, need to explain to someone what social media is and what it could mean for your company? Look here! Thanks a lot for sharing, Stephen - and Luis.

What are comment posting and reading best-practices? Sometime ago I posted this question.

In the meantime ReadWriteWeb has an interesting post on a new feedreader, called fav.or.it that:...lets you read feed content and comment, all within the app. The comments can be two-way, meaning publishers can choose to aggregate fav.or.it comments into their blogs.A video also gives you an idea what it looks like and how it works.

Is this the answer to my question? It sure looks like it! But we'll have to see in practice. Soon they'll be open to the public.

Lots of time goes into scheduling meetings. Of course using Outlook Calender helps a bit. But, every Outlook experiences its limitations daily. For instance, planning multiple meetings at once or giving options for meeting dates/times to a group. For me, a person without a secretary, it's a hastle, but secretaries themselves run into this problem over and over again. Timebridge addresses the issues that Outlook neglects. (-- How come Microsoft doesn't seem to get these problems and fix them?!) I just registered to Timebridge and am going to try it out, because they seem to really have solved scheduling problems.What they also do is integrate your personal calender (e.g. Google Calender) with with your other calender (e.g. your work calender, which usually is Outlook). I use SynMyCal for that now (which works wonderfully for me).

Here's a post on how Timebridge works and what new products they have to offer. (There's also a video on how Timebridge works.)

Google's CIO, Douglas Merrill, tells us how Google innovates and fosters being innovative in this 50 minute video. He calls Google "an innovation engine". The last 10 minutes is the most interesting part, when he gets into how Google tries to remain innovative. The approach is not surprising, but hard anyway. But they seem to be doing things right anyway...

Business Week published an interesting article on "The End of Work As You Know It". It tries to give us a peek in the future, based on mechanisms that many books have laid out for us, such as "The World is Flat" and "Wikinomics". The article ends with:All that raises a fundamental question about technology's ultimate impact on workers. Will this be a new world of empowered individuals encased in a bubble of time-saving technologies? Or will it be a brave new world of virtual sweatshops, where all but a tech-savvy few are relegated to an always-on world in which keystrokes, contacts, and purchases are tracked and fed into the faceless corporate maw?

It's safe to say we'll see some of both. But perhaps we can comfort ourselves by realizing that, while technology will change the nature of work, it can't change human nature. "All of these technologies," says Charles Grantham, executive producer of the research group Work Desig…

Is this new? This Web 2.0 Search Engine lets you:Simply search for a keyword of what your [note: typo, should be "you"] wish to make or work with to see the tools & Web 2.0 links available.Very unclear description of what this search engine is about... I tried the engine by typing in "blogging". The result list you get is not insightful either. There's no information on how the result list is defined. Is it a ranked list? Or is the top result that latest information on this topic?Actually I was hoping it would give a list of all - in this case - "blogging" tools ((non-)commercial) out there. Something like web2logo (which also has a search engine).

Some time ago I posted about an article in TR on Powerset. Mark Johnson from Powerset left a comment and pointed me to a blog post about their first demo. Data Strategy says:It was basically a PowerPoint with some live demonstration of a few queries where Powerset got much better results than Google. (No surprises there.) Note that all the demos throughout the evening were only searching over Wikipedia.And:The interesting part of the night was the demo station where they allow people to compare search results between Powerset and Google. The queries were limited to the form of “What did ___ say?” and people were welcomed to fill in the blank with famous names.And:After each query, the user was encouraged to vote using one of the three buttons underneath the search box. He could vote that 1) Powerset results were better, 2) Google results were better, or 3) It’s a tie, and the buttons kept track of the counts. In almost all cases, the results were either a tie or Powerset had better an…

I missed the reference to the definition of Web 3.0 given on the O'Reilly Radar some time ago. It relates to Schmidt's definition but it's much more elaborate. Tim O'Reilly also gave his definition in an interview (on IT conversations?). Tim's definition was more about "always being online" and "Internet moving to devices".

I'll give a (short) summary of the talk, but please block an hour and sit back, learn and apply. It worked for me, although most of it can also be read in David Allen's, "Getting things done" (GTD) - which is very worth the read. I apply it to my daily work and it helped me be more productive.

Here goes the summary:Email was like a little hug I (Merlin) was giving people a hug and getting hugs from people.But it didn’t always stay that way.Email became the one source for all incoming and outgoing information. You didn’t need a system to handle email. Now you do. A simple and complete framework how to deal with your email. More and more people live in their email. They do everything in there (for practical purposes). They have their system in there. That is not a way to live, according to Mann. You should have a system…

Just set up a "Shared items list" which shows feeds I've read and like to share with you. They're on my blog (on the right hand side). You can also find them here (and subscribe to it, if you want). Hope you enjoy it.

It says:Google Reader, the company's syndicated newsreader, is search-less today, despite significant demand for the ability to search through news feeds and other RSS subscriptions. A few hacks to search through Google Reader feeds have even popped up on the Internet. The Google Reader team "gets the message," according to Google software engineer Matt Cutts, and Google Reader search is one of the top priorities on the team's list. Looking forward to it! And how about adding Google Reader to the Google Apps package?

There's been some buzz on the debate between Andrew Keen and David Weinberger at the Supernova conference and in the WSJ. It's an interesting and weird discussion in many ways.At Supernova Weinberger gives an interesting overview of handling analogue and digital information. Ending up in "digitalizing everything" and having users organize it.I find it disappointing that he didn't go into the fact(?) that not everything will be digitalized. Remember "The myth of the paperless office"? We live in a mixed world, with paper and digital information, with structured and unstructured information. The real question is: how do we cope with that, how do we organize this way of living, can it be done?Furthermore, I simply can't seem to understand the point Keen is making. Every time Keen says/writes something I came up with an answer (except for the points that Weinberger agrees with such as "authority on the web"). And, funny enough, Weinberger give…

Some time ago I posted on definitions of information architecture. Gartner sees information architecture as part of, what they call, Enterprise Architecture. So, within the Enterprise Architecture (which basically comprises the whole company) there's an information architecture, with an information architect. The picture describes his/her roles. Gartner distinguishes between three levels of architects. It's not clear to me why that make this distinction and call all of them information architects. I would call the first (left) one an information architect. The second (middle) one I would join with the first. The third (right) is the information management department employee to me.